September 10, 2006

Future Imperfect, Past Imperfect

Flickr features Desolation Row, B&W shots from a “futuristic”–and now abandoned–housing development in Taiwan. [Via]

Speaking of futures that never were, here’s the late Braniff Airways’ view of what air travel could be, circa 1975. (If you wore the tinfoil pants, would the TSA then let you carry a Coke on board?) [Via] Oh, and related to retro, never-quite-happened air travel, have you seen the Goodyear Inflatoplane?

A sort of Flickr of the past, Square America bills itself as “A gallery of vintage snapshots & vernacular photography.” Odd finds include “Defaced,” a gallery of photos with faces scratched out. [Via]

Among other surprises from the past, I had no idea that color photography existed in World War I. Kottke links to this and other collections.

Illustrator Techniques newsletter launches

The folks behind Photoshop World & Layers magazine have just launched Illustrator Techniques, a newsletter & Web site aimed at Illustrator users of all stripes. The site is sharing some sample tutorials (here’s one on 3D in Illustrator) and hosts a user forum as well as a gallery of user work (nice ‘Vettes). The team, which includes editor/author of Illustrator CS2 Killer Tips Dave Cross & his co-author Matt Kloskowski, plans to publish 8 times annually. Much success, guys!

FlashFilterLab: Visual effects builder for Flash

As I’ve mentioned previously, I came to Adobe to hijack the brains of people smarter than me, getting them to make crazy technology accessible to regular creative folks. Along those lines, it’s great to see FlashFilterLab, a free project that lets you leverage the Flash Player’s new runtime filter effects by using a drag-and-drop visual system instead of writing code. The FFL gallery encourages sharing & community review. Nice! [Via Mark Baltzegar]
Related: Filter Forge brings a similar approach to creating Photoshop filters. Big ups to the brainiacs who are opening these technologies to broad experimentation.

And speaking of brushes…

GetBrushes.com is a fresh new repository of Photoshop brushes, featuring a user forum & RSS feeds of the latest content. PhotoshopSupport.com has a brief interview with site creator Ivan Dilber.

Veerle Pieters offers a short but sweet tutorial on creating grunge brushes. It gives a great start, though I’d suggest going a degree further by playing with the scatter, spacing, and other options in Photoshop’s Brushes palette.

The Adobe Web team has now re-launched the Adobe Exchange, combining the content of the former Adobe & Macromedia exchanges. The Photoshop section now contains brushes, shapes, actions, and more.